Free Kitchen

I've got that itch again.

It's the itch to play with houses.

I used to get to play with houses for a living.  I renovated my rental properties (sometimes over and over again -- because it was necessary).  Then I moved into flipping houses.  It was wonderful fun -- except for that moment about 75% of the way through when all the problems have shown up and the money's almost gone and I would always think "WHAT HAVE I DONE?"  But it always came together in the end.  The panic was just part of the process.  I watch other flippers go through that same stage on every episode of house flipping shows on TV.  I learned to remind myself that the panic was normal and not reason to never renovate another house.

I still itch to play with houses.  Someday, maybe I'll get to do that again...

For right now, what I am just CRAZED to do is to challenge myself to create a whole kitchen FOR FREE!

I don't mean pot holders and area rugs and pictures on the wall.

I mean I want to create a WHOLE kitchen in an empty space that has no cabinets, no appliances, nothing.  Just an empty box with some pipes sticking out of the floor and some wiring available.

It would probably be pretty easy to get my hands on someone's discarded kitchen cabinets -- someone who's upgrading and just wants to get rid of the old ones (and who hasn't taken a sledge hammer to them in the removal process -- it always drives me nuts when people do that).

BUT!

I kinda like the bigger challenge of doing it without real kitchen cabinets.   I like the idea of freestanding and flexible pieces.  Who says a kitchen has to be done the "normal" way with cabinets bolted to all the walls?  In fact, 100 years ago, kitchens were ALL freestanding pieces.  That's why Hoosier cabinets were invented.  I'm ready to be a rebel and to embrace some old-fashioned elements and some new-fangled style!

I really like Katie Brown's non-traditional kitchen.  Remember her from HGTV?  All the pieces are movable so that thing could be repositioned for filming purposes.  But hers is a little more built-in that I want to do -- though I do LOVE the rustic, reused cabinet doors.  I'm also not planning on pouring concrete counter tops (though it COULD happen I suppose!).

That's her daughter, Prentiss.  I think that's SUCH a cute name!  Don't know the dog's name.

This is the left side of it. 

See how the dish storage is just wood cubbies?

I also love this very simple, RAW bathroom.
 Love the old school sink with FOUR faucets!  And the peely mirror!

As for appliances, I don't think they would be too hard to procure for free.  Everyone is crazed about stainless steel appliances right now.  I have them so I'm kinda over it.  Non-stainless appliances have become the red-headed stepchild of kitchen design lately.  Heck!  I wouldn't even mind some good, ole, bullet-proof, avocado green models because you've just gotta love a chalkboard paint fridge (though I would use black chalkboard paint)!  I could go CRAZY with the chalkboard paint!  Might just have to do a whole wall -- or two.  Or more. 

I'm also thinking I could paint a stove with black appliance paint.

And the front panels of lots of dishwashers are removable.  I wonder what fun material I could think of to put on the front of a dishwasher?  I wish corrugated tin wasn't quite so... corrugated/bumpy.

Counters present a challenge but, with freestanding pieces, I would need less counter surface.  I've also seen them done with painted plywood or even glass.  Or there's always concrete.  But there are other possibilities as well!

Sinks and faucets are findable.  Maybe not porcelain farmhouse sinks that cost several hundred dollars but white or stainless sinks are out there -- often with the faucet still attached.

I don't need anything top-of-the-line (in fact, I think the concept is wasteful and the phrase is offensive to me!) but I would intend for the end product to be cool, functional, and magazine-worthy.  As is the goal with all my free projects, you can gets lots of stuff for free, but the real fun is to end up with free stuff that doesn't look like it was free!  There are lots of dirty blue velour sofas on the curbs of America.  That is not my idea of good freesourcefullness.  Neither is just slapping in stuff to fill the spaces.  I love to really have my creativity challenged.  I love to elevate free junk to unexpected heights.

I saw a kitchen ceiling in a magazine recently that was sheathed in old garage door panels.  Sounds gross but it was really great!  I'll have to look through a ton of magazines and see if I can find that photo to show you  But it just goes to show that you never know what you might find or how you might use it.

There will be more on this free kitchen stuff.  I should warn you.  I'm obsessed.

Does anyone have a gutted kitchen and about six months before they want to do any actual cooking?

I could make it pretty for you!

Woman Country!

This blog was originally about furnishing and decorating my house for FREE.  There's a long and very creepy story about why we don't have that house anymore that's detailed in the post called "The Bitter End" (http://freesourcefull.blogspot.com/2011/08/bitter-end.html) if you want to read about it.

Lately, this blog has been about cheap/free projects and general frugality. 

But, sometimes, I post things on this blog just because they make me happy!  Usually, this things cost me little or nothing or even made money so they fit with the general FREESOURCEFULL theme. 

This is one of those posts!

I will admit it.  I am sort of a hoarder.  And I included the "sort of" part just to make myself feel better!  My garage is the bottle neck of my life.  If I can only get it cleaned out and organized and functioning the way I need it to, it will solve many problems in my life.  Really! 

I'll spare you the explanations and excuses.  You wouldn't buy them anyway.  But do keep in mind that I had/have a staging business and also that I have emptied four storage units in the past couple of years.  So, I really HAVE made progress -- even if it doesn't look like it!

On Wednesday night, in the midst of a very busy, wall-to-wall day, I walked into the garage for something.  Well, actually, I had to climb over some stuff to get into the garage.  This photo was taken after after I cleared a path. 

I don't even remember now what it was that I went in there for.  And I don't really know how it happened.  I just started moving things.  After a while, I decided that, regardless of all the millions of other things I SHOULD have been doing, I was going to get the most done if I stayed with my muse and worked on the garage while I was on a roll. 

Several hours later, I dragged myself in the front door to find some dinner.  Two of my girls met me in the front hall and asked: "Do you know what time it is?"

"No."

It was 11:29 p.m.!  I had no idea!
But it was worth every second I had spent out there.  And it was worth starving for!

In 2002, when we added onto the house and re-oriented the garage to open to the side, I turned the previous front entry into a little bumped-out workshop.  It's about six feet deep and 20 feet wide.  My ex-husband claimed it as the only area in our girly, female-dominated house that was "HIS".  He dubbed it "Man Country". 

Well, now we're divorced and I'm well on my way to getting the worst dregs of his motor-old covered car junk out of there and making it MINE!  So it is now "WOMAN COUNTRY"!

Now that I write this, I remember the subliminal image that must have started me on my garage-cleaning.  It was this glorious magazine photo of workshop heaven which I had taped to the wall in the garage for inspiration and hope for future transformation:

Isn't it glorious?

That must have been what got me started.  I think it happened when I realized that there were shelves in the photo and I had THESE sitting by the front door on the way to the trash:

And then they just happened to be the perfect length and then one thing led to another and now, still far from OCD/Martha Stewart perfect but a vast improvement over my previous garage hell, here it is:

I haven't made the labels yet but the shelves from the top down are "Construction Materials", "Cleaning Products", "Care Care", "and Auto Repair".  Then, below the shelves, are places to hand power tool cases.  Beside the shelves to the right are extension cords, a nail and screw organizer, and other "flat" things that won't impede the door from opening. 

There's a workbench under the window.  It holds a chopsaw on top and, underneath, the shop vac and a chainsaw case.  Here a two crappy photos that,if put together, might give you an idea of what it looks like:

Here's the other side of the workshop:

It contains my beloved table saw (which I use ALL THE TIME!), lots of little drawers for small items, my fun old red magazine holders (lest ye thing I'm just a magazine hoarder, I REALLY DO go back to these magazines over and over for inspiration), and some other junky boy stuff that I still have to sort through which is over and under a fun old black-topped school science lab table.

Anyway, it's not perfect (yet!) but it makes me happy.  I keep catching myself standing in the garage just admiring it or finding excuses to go through there now that I can walk unimpeded!

Speaking of impeded... There's still the REST of the garage to be dealt with:

UGH!